Simply (the river)

 

(fragment):

      its water comes from the ocean
      travels across the sky
      leads to the mountain

the river is always and only

beginning

its water comes from the sky

its water comes from the ocean

its water comes from the mountain

its water comes from

the river

the mountain is

the mountain

the river

is the river

the sky is a cupped hand, palm

turned towards the ground

let us gather all our sadnesses

in that.

Arian Tejano is for me one of those poets whose work often provokes a powerful and immediate desire to engage and respond.

these lines speak directly to his poem Simply, at his blog ANoiseless Patient Spider

origami

these words
we fold into ourselves

from the broad sheet of all possible words.

these words
we unfold at night

on a tatami mat of  breath.

behind fragile
walls we fold
into each other.

Here.  Listen.

a thousand paper cranes

take flight -

.

fragment from a hand-held device #3

a memory came to him of swimming in the dams at the farms of his friends.  how the cold water lay eighteen inches or maybe years below the surface, and would caress the limbs;  stretching its hard fingers through the syrupy warmth to catch and clutch.  how it could tighten around the chest like a python, and squeeze breath from the body.  those fingers, that would sometimes steal a small child or a drunken man, and give them back empty.

those fingers.

that need.

fragment from a hand-held device #2

assuming the position

we practise stillness

in the same way.

with gestures too large for the stage